‘The Riverbank’ Locarno Review: An Eerie Journey Into Brazil’s Divided Soul

Two seemingly irreconcilable worlds coexist in this film—and, more broadly, in contemporary Brazil. On one side are people like Izaquiel (Caique Copque), the film’s protagonist, and his circle of friends: Black, gay, transvestite and transgender people living on society’s margins. On the other are Brazil’s most conservative evangelical churches, where sex is considered sinful—and even more so when it isn’t heterosexual. The film brings these opposing realities together through Izaquiel himself, who lands a job cleaning one of these churches. He’s openly gay, and at night he ventures into the dark, notorious riverside area that gives the film its title, seeking out anonymous, intense sexual encounters. During the day, however, he’s told that if he wants to keep his job, he’ll have to take out his earrings and remove his nail polish.

At first, these two worlds exist side by side without truly intersecting. As Izaquiel settles into the church, he grows increasingly uneasy with what he hears and sees there, surprised by the presence of firearms and other details that seem at odds with the evangelical values being preached. At night, despite repeated pleas from his friends to stay away—the area is rumored to be dangerous, and a body is eventually found there—he continues returning to the riverside mangroves to meet a mysterious lover named Jeremías, whose enigmatic presence gradually becomes more unsettling.

Eventually, those parallel worlds collide, pushing The Riverbank into the territory of a crime thriller that implicates both sides of this social divide. As a metaphor for the hypocrisy, violence, and deep fractures running through Brazilian society, the debut feature from Carvalho and Farias occasionally takes on more than it can comfortably carry. Across its two-hour runtime it introduces political intrigue, hints of corruption involving influential religious figures, disappearances, and other mysteries. Yet it never loses its grip. An atmosphere of mounting tension and intrigue sustains the film throughout, as it stages a strange dance of attraction between these opposing worlds—a dance that is clearly destined to end in tragedy.

Both filmmakers previously collaborated with Kleber Mendonça Filho, and their debut displays a similarly assured command of craft. Formally classical yet sexually daring, The Riverbank is sharply critical of figures who, as a father-and-son duo, inevitably recall some of Brazil’s best-known political dynasties, where evangelical fervor goes hand in hand with an obsession with firearms. The film also cultivates an eerie, almost horror-like atmosphere, at times resembling a giallo-inflected crime story where dread and mystery become inseparable. That pervasive darkness—reinforced by a dense, evocative score—elevates The Riverbank beyond the conventions of social drama. It becomes a haunting fable about the uneasy coexistence of two radically different realities forced to share the same country.